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Mark Trail, 3/31/17

Whoa, whoa, whoa there Mark Trail, after boring, interminable days of black-footed ferret and prairie dog survey talk and even more boring, interminable days of Mark taking Rusty fishing and promising to take Rusty and Cherry on a trip to Mexico at some unspecified time in the future, which was so boring and interminable that I didn’t even bother discussing it here, we have some abrupt whiplash as we’re suddenly thrust into the seedy, violent South Dakota underworld. I guess Johnny and Mark are going to do less ferret/prairie dog counting and more punching and/or avoiding getting shot! It would be “too bad” if they fell victim to gunplay.

Gil Thorp, 3/31/17

Wait wait hold up: Ken Brown’s mom is the same judge who put erstwhile Most Unpleasant Mudlark Barry “Darth” Bader’s dad in jail last year? Frustratingly, I didn’t post any of the strips where she appears, but I’m pretty sure this is her, plus how many Mudlarks could possibly have judge moms, anyway? Sure, she her name is “Hiatt,” not Brown, but a liberal feminazi who refuses to take her husband’s name is exactly the sort of judicial activist who thinks an upstanding businessman who maybe had a drink or two should go to prison just because he killed someone with his car.

Beetle Bailey, 3/31/17

Man, if you need a quick primer on the priorities of the staff of Walker-Browne Amalgamated Humor Industries LLC, compare the loving, idyllic representation of a golf course in panel two to the featureless void that is General Halftrack’s office in panel one.

Mary Worth, 3/31/17

“Oh, you welcome all helpful hints?” asks Mary. Her eyes glow a dull red. “You’re voluntarily requesting helpful hints from me,” she says. Her jaw unhinges and the top of her head flips back, revealing an infinitely black maw. “I have so many helpful hints to give you. So many.” A terrible fluttering of filthy wings blots out first all other sounds and then the sun, yet somehow they can still hear her. “SO MANY. SO HELPFUL.”

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Mark Trail, 3/13/17

Hey, parents: if your kid asks for $60,000 so they can get an MFA in film from USC or whatever, be aware that probably the best job they can get upon graduation is running black-footed ferret and prairie dog surveys out in South Dakota’s tornado alley.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/13/17

Oh, hey, were you worried that Sarah’s amnesia was going to interfere with her schooling? Well, don’t fret: Welton Green may talk a big game about assessing talent and intellect, but as long as your check clears, they don’t really give a shit about things that don’t involve your check clearing.

The Lockhorns, 3/13/17

Leroy’s boss hasn’t bothered him in a week, because he murdered his boss and left his corpse to putrefy right there in his cube!

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Funky Winkerbean, 3/11/17

OK, since we reintroduced the “Les has writer’s block” plot last week, I decided to dig into my archives and figure out what book exactly Les is trying and failing to write. This is his recent writing career, as near as I’ve been able to reconstruct it:

• 10/13/14: After winning many accolades for Lisa’s Story, his book about his dead first wife, Lisa, Les surprises his alive current wife Cayla with the script for a graphic novel about her. Sure, it’s framed as “finding a new love and new life,” i.e., it’s framed as being post-Lisa, but she’s gotta be excited about that, right?

• 10/17/14: She’s extremely excited about that, especially when Les promises to take her on an epic, tax-deductible “vacation” to Hong Kong to watch the book get printed!

• 6/20/15: Eight months later, there’s been no movement on getting the Cayla book published, but Darrin suggests that Les write another damn Lisa book, this time about how Les and Lisa met. They met in high school, actually, which is pretty boring, but that doesn’t stop Les from being hella intrigued:

  

• 8/18/15: Les announces that he’s taken Darrin’s advice and will begin “a prequel to Lisa’s Story” and that also oh, by the way, “my publisher has decided to hold off on publishing the book we just finished” (presumably the Cayla book) “and bring them out as epilogue and prologue,” thus cementing Cayla’s status as an epilogue to Les’s actual story with his actually important wife, Lisa, and also postponing the publication of her book and their big vacation to Hong Kong indefinitely.

• 8/19/15: Even though the Hong Kong trip is off, Les tells Cayla to keep her passport current, because he might whisk her off to Paris at moment’s notice! This never happens.

• 11/29/15: Les is having some trouble starting on this new book about how he met his dead wife Lisa!

• 3/3/17: Les is still having some trouble starting on this new book about how he met his dead wife Lisa!

So all that sort of made sense, assuming you’re starting from the premise that Les is a monstrously bad husband, which, duh, but now today’s strip implies that this trilogy/prequel thing is a new idea, and that The Last Leaf (oh, I forgot to mention that Les’s book about Cayla, ostensibly about finding new love and happiness, inexplicably has the awful, death-haunted title The Last Leaf) already came out, and, I dunno, man. I think the important thing is that we never saw Les grappling with the process of writing his Cayla book at all, whereas his new Lisa is book is going to get rehashed over the course of multiple timeline-instances, forever and ever.

Rex Morgan, M.D., 3/11/17

At last, under a new writer, Rex Morgan is moving away from tales of the Morgans getting huge checks and/or mafia protection and getting back to basics: medical drama! Specifically, drama about dehydration and sleep apnea, some of the least exciting medical conditions known to man. Can’t wait for the six-week exploration of the heartbreak of shingles!

Mark Trail, 3/11/17

“Okay, honey! I was only kidding with you!” says Cherry, with a deadened facial expression that tells us that she was very much not kidding, that she doesn’t even know what the word “kidding” means.